They say the past is another country. Some people can go there. It hasn't been an easy time for Matiu Douglas, magical adept. One of his friends is now a ghost, his enemies have stolen the Treaty of Waitangi, he can't date the girl he really likes and he keeps getting unwanted marriage proposals from a dangerous, centuries-old tohunga's daughter. But when his best friend, Riki, is snatched into the ghost-world of Aotearoa during a school trip, Mat has to put all his other worries aside and act fast. For Riki vanished at Parihaka, scene of one of the darkest acts from New Zealand's colonial past, and in Aotearoa such places are deadly dangerous.